“I have seasoned hostage negotiators on hand who can help,” Haggar said. “Will you be willing to do whatever it takes?”
“Anything,” Ellie said.
The FBI agent Haggar had sent off to retrieve the school blueprints came running over with them in hand. She had an electric look in her eyes; Ellie guessed they had dug up something of vital importance.
“Sir, you should come inside right away. I think we have a serious problem on our hands.”
Someone handed Ellie a pair of gloves. She put them on as she followed Haggar into Jake’s trailer. This was not how she’d imagined being invited into his home, but here she was.
Ellie looked around and saw only a devoted dad doing his best to provide for his son, to create a home-but the light was dim and rather depressing, the walls were paneled wood and dark, the quarters cramped, and the furniture all looked secondhand.
Despite this, Ellie had to admire Jake for his effort. Being a single parent under any circumstance was not easy; and in addition to the worry over Andy’s diabetes, Jake’s salary could not have been very much. The trailer was not the ideal place to raise a child, but Jake had spruced it up by filling the home with photographs of a father and a son, memories of good times together, two people making a go of it best they could.
Seven or so gloved agents began tearing the place apart and their combined body heat turned the trailer sauna hot. For Ellie, it was as difficult to breathe as it was to move. A special agent, tall and dark-haired, greeted Haggar in the living room and led him and Ellie down a narrow hallway. Ellie excused herself to push by the crush of agents engaged in a carefully orchestrated demolition of Jake’s life.
The agent escorted Ellie and Haggar to Jake’s bedroom. He had the same excited look as the woman who had summoned them into the trailer.
“What do we got?” Haggar asked.
“Guns and a whole lot of crazy,” the agent said.
He opened a closet and cleared away some clothes to reveal a gun rack with five secured rifles, only two of which Ellie recognized as a Browning and a Remington.
“So he’s a hunter,” Haggar said. “These weapons all look properly secured to me. And they’re not on his person, so that’s another plus.”
“That’s what I said, until we found this.”
From within the closet, the agent removed a large backpack secured to an ALICE frame and brought it over to the bed. He opened the pack, tipped it over, and dumped out the contents. He took more stuff from various zipped-up pouches.
Ellie studied the items with growing unease. On the bed were several liters of water, a filtration system, clothing, a tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, cooking gear, and a hygiene kit. It would have all made sense to her, except Jake had never mentioned a love of camping. Somebody who loved camping enough to own this kind of gear would have talked about it, she believed.
He unzipped another pouch. What he pulled out made Ellie shiver: a SIG SAUER P226, with ammo to go with it. Most campers Ellie knew carried a whistle to scare away the bears, not a high-caliber pistol.
Haggar eyed the items. “So he’s an outdoorsman who doesn’t want to be mugged in the woods,” he said. “I’m still not concerned.”
The agent said, “Yeah? Just wait.”
The agent removed from the closet a twenty-gallon plastic tote with an attached lid. He set the tote on the floor by the bed and took off the lid. The agent pulled out from the tote a tactical helmet with a J-arm attachment, which Ellie suspected accommodated a night vision optical. They took more items out of the container and piled them on the bed: ammo, laminated maps, several large knives, a compass, green Kevlar line, wire, duct tape, magnifying glasses, handcuffs, body armor, satellite phone, batons, and lots of books.
Their titles made Ellie’s stomach sink. She focused on a few of the meatier tomes: Surviving the End of the World, After the Falclass="underline" How Doomsday Preppers Will Look Like Prophets, The A-Z of Prepping, and Get Ready for the End of the World, whose title left little doubt about its contents.
“I’m not a profiler, sir,” the agent said with a gleam in his eyes. “But it seems we’ve got a loose cannon. This guy thinks the world is coming to an end, and I suspect he’s armed to do battle.”
Ellie watched the color drain from Haggar’s face and guessed hers had done the same. Heartbreaking as it was, without a doubt, Ellie knew this was the real secret Jake had been guarding.
Haggar unfolded the blueprints and spread them out on the bed, covering Jake’s survival gear like a blanket. He studied the plans thoughtfully; then he looked to Ellie.
“Does Jake Dent know how to access all the tunnels at the school?”
Ellie said, “He never said anything to me, but he’s in charge of maintenance, so I suspect there’s a good chance he does.”
Haggar whistled long and low. “If that’s the case, our problem just got a whole lot bigger.”
CHAPTER 34
David and Rafa squared off onstage like martial arts combatants gearing up for battle. Their heads were bowed, eyes to the floor. Fausto stood behind the pair with one hand perched on each boy’s trembling shoulder. He looked supremely satisfied.
“So,” Fausto said, eyeing Rafa, “your friend here has the key, you say?”
David lifted his head and pulled his long hair back from his face to fix Rafa with a furious stare.
“He has it,” Rafa said. “I know it’s him.”
“I do not,” David said through gritted teeth. “How do I know you didn’t take it?”
Rafa bellowed, “Because I didn’t!”
David craned his neck to look at Solomon, who cowered on the floor, shaking like the last leaf of autumn. “I just want to go home,” Solomon said. “I just want to go home.”
Without warning, Rafa leaned forward and shoved David hard in the chest. David tried to hold his ground, but staggered a few steps back.
“Don’t be a coward,” Rafa said, panting out the words. His sweat-drenched face crinkled with a look of utter contempt. “They’re going to kill us if you don’t give it to them. So give it up now.”
“I told you, I don’t have it!” David screamed back. He lunged forward and gave Rafa an equally hard shove.
The attack took Rafa by surprise, and he lurched backward before regaining his footing. David and Rafa went at each other simultaneously, clinched, and began to wrestle with neither gaining much advantage over the other. They gripped each other’s shirts as they spun around haplessly.
Fausto could not have looked more pleased. He pulled the machete out of the stage floor and raised the blade level with his shoulders as he lifted his arms. For a moment, he looked like a crazed conductor about to guide a symphony with a brutish, oversized wand. His mouth parted into a twisted grin and the metal inside caught the stage lights.
“Boys, boys,” Fausto said, lowering his weapon. “I say you fix this problem like men.”
Rafa ignored Fausto. His determination to get David’s confession had become its own presence in the room. “You’re a liar, David. A big, fat liar!”
“He’s not fat, really,” Fausto said in a semi-serious tone while he appraised David, his fingers rubbing against his chin. “But I do get your point.”
The boys were focused exclusively on each other. David shouted back, “You know what I think? I think you have it!”
Rafa’s face contorted with rage as he lunged at David, arms outstretched. David stepped back, but Rafa continued his advance. He fired punch after punch, all of them coming fast and furious. David tried to fend off the blows as best he could by spinning his arms like a windmill, but he had no adequate defense. David dropped to his knees and used his arms to shield his head from Rafa’s unrelenting blows.
Fausto crouched down to David’s level. “Why don’t you fight for yourself?” he screamed into David’s face, like a boxer’s trainer. “You let him beat you like this? Like a dog? It makes me think he’s right. You are guilty. Hiding something. Maybe I torture you until you talk. Maybe I focus my steel on you.”